The new kid on the block

Social media is still considered to be the “snotty little kid” in Internet Marketing circles. What is even scarier to contemplate is the effect that this pre-pubescent child has had on all our lives. With all of the traditional social media becoming “old school”, a new kid has arrived on the block. Move over Facebook, Twitter and even Google+, this new kid is stepping up as a really valuable marketing tool for business.

So, who or what is Pinterest you may be asking yourself?Simply put, it is an online notice board where you can pin on your favourite images. Pinterest was launched in 2012 and is already facing wild huge growth and the site registered more than 7 million unique visitors in December alone. What makes Pinterest such an amazing internet marketing tool is that it is driving more traffic to company websites and blogs than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined!

Why should small and medium enterprises care for yet another social media site? In order to better answer that question one needs to understand how consumers are using Pinterest. The site allows you to organise images into boards for specific categories. Whenever you ‘pin’ something new, your followers will see it. They can like, comment or re-pin to their boards. From there on it is viral and manic. Not since the introduction of Facebook has a social media website created so much excitement. Here is why business owners, especially retailers, should seriously contemplate starting a business profile on Pinterest now:

Consumer behaviour on Pinterest

The most important business application is the ability to post images of your products on your pin board and then link them back to your website. It works as a virtual store catalogue or shop front. Bear in mind that it is still social media and you cannot simply display images of your products without contributing other content or sharing. 

As a rule, do not get too promotional as you do not want to lose the interest of potential customers by bombarding them with images of your products. They want to know more and find out more about the company and this is your shot!

You also need to drive sales through your internet marketing or social media campaigns and Pinterest can help you achieve this. In the last six months, the retail deal site ideeli.com has seen a 446 percentage increase in web traffic from Pinterest and has seen a massive increase in their conversion rates.